When an invite from GTR Cartel to attend Santa Pod to check out the UK’s fastest Nissan GT-Rs lands on your desk, you don’t say no…
GTR Cartel, one of the UK’s fastest growing car communities, held its inaugural shootout at Santa Pod on October 10. Here, your quick remap and exhaust tunes aren’t going to cut it, we’re talking seriously set up road cars that can tackle the ¼ mile in under 9 seconds.
The morning was spent testing before the afternoon spiced up with the actual shootout. Testing brought about a few casualties, the worse being a snapped front differential on a 1000bhp car, followed by the show-stopper, known as JUN R1 and built by Newcastle tuning company JM Imports, suffering a similar ill fate albeit with different causes.
Incidentally, JUN R1 runs at 2200bhp; it completed the ¼ early in the morning in 9.4 seconds at, wait for it, 101mph… After completing most of the ¼ mile, the driver decided to roll to the line and rest the car. You see, here, in the world of “racing in straight lines”, the first 60ft counts for everything, traction off the line is the difference between fast cars and mind-blowing cars. They’d got their data, it was then time to ramp up the boost for a flying run. Unfortunately, the car had other ideas and had to be towed back to the paddock before hanging up the boots for the day.
So, the competition turned to two best friends. The banter had been ramped up to 10, bets were on the table and money was at stake to find out who was the fastest. In the green corner was Buzz, who’s car had recently come back from the tuners with a staggering 1725bhp. In the purple corner was Rocky, who recently took the crown of fastest Nissan GT-R R35 over a standing mile at VMAX200 clocking just over 240mph at the expense of a Top Secret bumper and bodywork damage… That happened to be just 2mph short of a Koenigsegg Agera RSN driven by Koenigsegg’s own test driver!
With its battle wounds adorned, the first pass brought in a 9.8 second pass on slicks. The Syvecs ECU has been programmed with line lock, switching the drivetrain to rear-wheel drive only and lighting those rear tyres up for temps. The car sits at around 1550bhp with just over 1200lb ft of torque. With both cars running smoothly, it was time to up the ante.
Buzz’s R35 hit out first with an 8.8 second run at 171mph, then Rocky pipped it with an 8.7. This remained up until just after lunch when both cars hit 8.3 second runs; the green car pipping it by 0.026 seconds…
But, that’s not what we were all there for. Instead, it was the shootout that mattered. So, lining up with cars of similar times to the morning’s testing, GT-Rs went head-to-head, even with some of the other models that came out to play. An EP3 rocked up with a mid-10 second run on drag radials, while a bonkers RS3 saloon went into the 9s. For us, though, seeing a Mk2 Astra GTE tear up it’s front tyres in the burnout area before hitting a solid mid-10 second run was the sight of the day!
Sadly for Buzz, during the heats his car decided enough was enough, chucking half the gearbox out the rear before coming to a stop not even a half way down the strip. He may have taken the quickest time of the day, but when the going got tough, he was out in the heats. That left the door open for Rocky to take a clean sweep and win the shootout with comfortable and consistent 9 second runs before he drove home. Yes, both Buzz and Rocky’s cars are road legal…
